I aim to please!

Below is a link to a website of the Network Advertising Initiative which allows you to set a "blocker cookie" (my term) to tell DoubleClick, AvenueA, etc. to leave your computer alone. Your system must be able to accept the blocker cookie, either manually or automatically.

http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp

This is not solving the problem for me. I opted out of both and I still can not load FT without mutliple reload tries.... I guess new visitores with Norton Internet Secuturity will probably give up and never discover what there is to see at FT and members get frustrated. As much as I find FT of great use, I am not getting rid of my Norton on this computer.

We have a tech request in with our ad company to see if their ad servers are causing our pages to load slowly...

For us, though, we're not experiencing any slowness on the pages, from here at work, or at home (on my dialup). It's possible there's some internet traffic congestion between us and your system, possibly caused by the increased traffic brought on by all the virii running around.

I have several computer here, all on dial up. The only ones that have the problem are the ones with Norton Internet Security. The ones running with Zone Alarm work fine.

For those with problems, have you tried pinging some sites to see what response times you are getting?

(To ping, launch a DOS prompt from Windows (on mine, Start->Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt)). From the DOS prompt, type ping website.com {Enter}, substituting the site you want to ping for "website.com." For example, when I pinged webflyer, I entered ping webflyer.com {Enter}. It responded with 4 lines for 4 tries. My average response time was about 54ms. I also pinged Yahoo and received and average response time of about 37ms. (to exit the DOS window, type exit {Enter}. For comparison, I am connecting to the internet using a wireless router to a cable internet service to Comcast.

The response times will vary, in part, with the internet connection method, so DSL may be slower than cable, and dialup should be much slower than either DSL or cable. You may need to try this at several different times (including a low use time such as the middle of the night) in order to get a benchmark. My understanding (and I am not a techie/engineer) is that the pinging process is entirely outside of Windows, so IE, Norton, etc. should not have an impact on the response time. If you're getting good response times when pinging a site and slow page loading when browsing, that suggests a problem with Windows or its programs. However, if you get a slow response time, that suggests that hardware problems (including an external firewall) or network traffic may be slowing down the transmission. Knowing whether the problem appears to be internal or external should help in coming to a solution.

Hope that helps.

TRRed, thanks for your help (off line) trying to help me.

One thing to note (TRRed sugested I update my isolation info) I have NIS 2004. I am not having the problem on computers running NIS 2003, on NIS 2004.

I also have problem running www.zone.com as many time the page freezes or wont load - and I think it is the exact same problem that I am having with FT, NIS is block some information from being sent back to the server and the lack of this "handshake" is stalling the load of the page... my guess at this point.

k-meleon seems to slice through the problem

Okay technical geniuses - help me! My "Avenue A" problem is back - with a vengeance this time. I couldn't get on to Flyertalk earlier today - tried twice - because every time I clicked on "Forums" I got the "Avenue A" warning from Spybot. When I elect to block the download, everything stops. Dead.

The thing is, I visit a lot of websites where I also receive the "Avenue A" warning from Spybot (MSN and Hotmail are hotbeds of "Avenue A"), and I always elect to block it. Then those sites load normally and I go about my business.

Not Flyertalk, though. Elect to block Avenue A on Flyertalk and you block access to the whole website. Why is that? And can anything be done about it?

Flyingmama,

Several thoughts: (1) if you are working on a company computer, talk to the technical support and don't try any of the following; tech support may have settings in place to accomplish certain goals, but may be interfering with your browsing; (2) if you have not set a blocker cookie (see #26 above), do that; (3) you haven't mentioned what versions of Norton programs, Windows, and Spybot you are running (if there is a pattern of people having problems with Norton Internet Security 2004 versions, for example, that would help Dan and other to find a resolution); (4) after doing 2 above, try (a) setting Internet Explorer (or other browser) to reject all cookies from AvenueA or (b) setting your browser to ask you each time a site wants to set a 3rd party cookie (you will get a lot of such requests). I believe IE default setting is to accept all cookies. If the browser blocks the cookie, my guess is that you won't get the message from Spybot.


Here are some other general suggestions (follow at your own risk; consider setting a restore point (from within the Start->Help portion of Windows)): (a) consider deleting temporary files in Internet Explorer; (b) consider emptying the Windows temporary folder (this folder should only contain temporary files, but it is possible that some files end up in there that you need to keep; thus confirm there are no important files in this directory before deleting); (c) run general utilities such as Disk Doctor and WinDoctor; and (d) (the first thing any tech support will tell you to do, so I've assumed everyone has done this) reboot your computer and then go directly to the site (without opening your browser first, from Windows Start menu, go to Favorites and select Flyertalk); this is to see if you then still have a problem (one reason is to evaluate the possibility that another site you are visiting, including your home page, may be doing something that is causing interference).

Let us know how things go.

I've been having the same problems that everyone else has mentioned. I use IE6, Norton anti-virus, ZoneAlarm, Win2000P and SpyBot. The only way I've been able to view FT is to go to my E partition and reactivate Netscape. However, not is all well with Netscape. When I read a thread in a forum and want to continue browsing other threads in the same forum, the GO button at the bottom does not let me return to the same forum. I either have to select a new forum and then select the original forum or use the BACK button to return. This only started for me this last weekend.

The more third party applications you have running on your system to check incoming/outgoing internet traffic, the longer it's going to take for pages to be "cleared" for viewing, if at all.

Of course, but an Anti Virus Program, a Fire Wall and a Popup Blocker are all very common programs to have running at one time.

I have a machine that I use for testing with and it is very stripped down. With the only heavy duty extra app running of NIS 2004 I have the problem. I am sure other programs have the problem as well, but it seems to me FT needs to talk to their add people and instruct them that the page needs to load even in the popup is blocked.

I block popups at home, as well as all banners, and I don't have these incomplete load problems. The only things that don't load are the popups and banners. It sounds like something isolated to Norton and its way of handling those.

Everything is back to normal for me tonight!